COVID-19 vaccines: A perspective from social pharmacology

Social pharmacology is a branch of clinical pharmacology, which depicts relationships between society and drugs and in particular factors, reasons, social consequences of drug use as well as representations of drugs in the society. Recent development and marketing of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines raises a number of questions of social pharmacology: are vaccines drugs like any other? What is their perception at the individual, population and societal levels? How do individuals perceive the risks and benefits of these vaccines? What is the perception at the societal level? What is the individual and societal acceptability of these vaccines during a pandemic? All these questions are discussed in the light of recent data. A number of proposals, both at the individual and at the collective or population level, are formulated to help solve these problems of social pharmacology.